


Flummoxed

by Onyxed



Category: The Killing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:56:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28585341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onyxed/pseuds/Onyxed
Summary: For a word prompt: 'Flummoxed".A teeny tiny drabble on Holder and Linden's sexual dynamic.This doesn't take place anywhere in particular (I'm only a few eps into season 2).
Relationships: Stephen Holder & Sarah Linden, Stephen Holder/Sarah Linden
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	Flummoxed

Flummoxed.

Sarah never considered herself well-educated but she never doubted that she was smart. Smarter than almost anyone was willing to give her credit for. 

Almost anyone…

When she was nine years old she lived under a bridge for two weeks with a woman who called herself Ed and named every pigeon she saw. Ed wasn’t all there and Sarah decided it was better to be her caretaker than being a punching bag for the older girls at the home she’d been placed in that month. Long story short, instead of going to school those two weeks she steals a dictionary from the library and reads it aloud to Ed when she’s not talking to the pigeons. The pages were thin and translucent like Ed’s skin, even the crinkle of the turning pages sounded like her dry laugh.

Two weeks passed and Sarah got picked up again and thrown back in the system. By the time she got a chance to look for Ed again the woman was gone and Sarah never really got over the guilt of Ed probably thinking she’d abandoned her. But Sarah kept the dictionary all her life. Even when all her worldly possessions were crammed into a duffle bag or a couple of boxes- the worn out book remained when little else did.

That’s how she got so good with words.

How she knows the exact words to describe the look on Holder’s face as he stares up at her while she rolls her hips into his, impaling herself on him with precision and determination. He looks flummoxed. He knows he’s looking at her, naked and riding him like a pony, but it still confuses him. Like he’s seeing her for the first time. She doesn’t know he’s thinking about how beautiful she is, or how much she means to him, or that despite the countless ways she gets under his skin he’s still in disbelief every time she comes to him like this.

She could pretend they were just hookups, scratching an itch with someone who was always around and all too willing and ready to go at a moment's notice. He knew better. He knew the truth.

She was letting him in, letting him get close…

Even then as she picks up speed and he can feel himself winding tighter and tighter, he knows it's because she wants him to stop looking at her like that. Like she’s hung the moon and stars. Not because she doesn’t like it, but because deep down- in ways she’ll never admit- she’s already worried about what she’ll do someday to make him stop looking at her like that. She doesn’t want to let him down. Doesn’t want to admit that she has that power over him or that she even knows how to fall.

Holder lets his hands slide against her ribs and presses his forehead hard into her sternum. It doesn’t hurt but the pressure is odd and she doesn’t know why he does it from time to time. She’ll never ask and he won’t say until she does. Holder can smell the briny sweat on her skin and feel the hammering of her heart beneath all of it. He thinks about how strong she is to him, and how easily he could break her with his two hands- how anyone could. Like cracking the shell of an egg. She thought she was hardboiled, maybe she was. But the little cage she put around herself could be broken, he knew that. He'd seen the fissures before and knew how she kept them hidden. Tried to keep him at bay even now as he was buried in the heat of her body. 

She didn't know it, yet. But he'd gotten in a long time ago. She could put up all the walls she wanted. He was already on the other side. Waiting for her to stop climbing her own walls and just fucking talking to him. Anything him.

He feels her muscles flex around him and a sharp arousal cuts through his body as tries to hold on, tries to keep himself together as she does her damnedest to bring him down first. Holder won’t falter though. He knows what she’s doing. In that way that she’s always trying to win or always have things her way.

When they're out there, in the real world, he doesn’t fight her on it so much because most of the time she is right. But when they’re like this, and she’s fighting to just have an orgasm, he decides he wants things his way. Holder puts his best foot forward to draw things out, no shortcuts, no half-measures. When they fuck he’s all in. Its just them and no big bad world outside their door. 

So even though she swats his hands away when he tries to pull her down to kiss him, he’s not deterred. It's not that she doesn’t want him, she’s always the one who comes to find him- makes the suggestion to find someplace private. She’s just stubborn. Holder snatches her arms to pin them behind her back and he takes his time kissing whatever parts he can reach. Along her jaw and down her neck, over her breast and finally her nipples. She heaves a sigh that sounds like relief and he can feel her relax.

He knows sex, that tension and lust aren’t all there is. There’s connection and trust and that moment when they’re not chasing anything. They’re just living. In the same space. At the same time. Wrapped in the safety of their own little world with the endless rain tapping against the windows and the glow of the streetlights leeching the red from her hair and the blue from his eyes.

.


End file.
